Stairs= My Third Most Traumatizing Fear

This post has a purpose, I think. I just need you to stick with me while I get there.

My parents built our house so it was a work in progress for most of my childhood. When I was in late Elementary School they build an addition which involved a play room downstairs and an office and sewing room upstairs. This meant moving the basement door down a half flight of stairs and opening up the stairway to the playroom. So from the kitchen you can go upstairs to the bedrooms or downstairs to the celar or playroom (which is now my brother's bedroom). The problem with this was that there is this open space there. It was fine in the day time because you could see down the stairs to the playroom, the trouble was at night when the lights were off that the stairs to the playroom were super dark and I always got scared that someone was hiding on the stairs and would grab my leg when I went upstairs to bed. If I was the last one to go to bed I always had to turn the kitchen lights off, which meant standing in the darkness. For the most part I just ran and tried to jump past the open spot so no one could grab me. When I got to visit, I still do that. I realize writing this how crazy it sounds. In all 20 years of living in that house no one ever grabbed me, no one was ever hiding, I am an educated adult and know that monsters don't exist. And yet, I am still freaked out by open stairs.

see....that's my petrified face. 

Why am I wiring about this you ask? Well, because our new house has open stairs in the basement. The basement where my sewing room is. The sewing room that I spend time in by myself. I have thought about just taking the back door out of the house and walking around the outside of the house to skip taking the stairs. Talk about crazy. I don't walk around but I do ask nicely for Charlie to come downstairs with me, which he does, all while making jokes about how scary it is. I'm not so freaked out by going down, more so going back up.

Charlie monster=scariest monster ever. Wouldn't you be afraid of a monster with a GPS watch?

I keep telling myself to get over it. That doesn't seem to be working though. I'm thinking I should just accept that this is something I will always have an irrational fear of. At least I'll be in shape from running up the stairs at full speed, leaping 4 steps at a time.

I'll admit, this was not where I was going with this post. Sorry. Hope the idiotic pictures deter you from  the mindless ramblings of a 27 year old with a crazy fear of stairs.

Lauren

P.S Don't even bother asking me about my first and second most traumatizing fears....I can't even go there!

P.P.S I just googled "What floor of a house do most murders happen on?" expecting the answer to obviously be the basement. Well, I did not find the answer I was looking for and have decided to never sleep again! Don't google things you're already afraid of is the moral of that story.